Editorial: Mr. Trump's huge mess

Published
2:07 pm EDT, Saturday, June 23, 2018

Darwin Micheal Mejia, right, holds hands with his mother, Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, during a news conference after their reunion at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Friday, June 22, 2018, in Linthicum, Md. The Justice Department agreed to release Mejia-Mejia's son after she sued the U.S. government in order to be reunited following their separation at the U.S. border. She has filed for political asylum in the U.S. following a trek from Guatemala. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) less

Darwin Micheal Mejia, right, holds hands with his mother, Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, during a news conference after their reunion at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, ... more

Photo: Patrick Semansky

Photo: Patrick Semansky

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Darwin Micheal Mejia, right, holds hands with his mother, Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, during a news conference after their reunion at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Friday, June 22, 2018, in Linthicum, Md. The Justice Department agreed to release Mejia-Mejia's son after she sued the U.S. government in order to be reunited following their separation at the U.S. border. She has filed for political asylum in the U.S. following a trek from Guatemala. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) less

Darwin Micheal Mejia, right, holds hands with his mother, Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, during a news conference after their reunion at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, ... more

Photo: Patrick Semansky

Editorial: Mr. Trump's huge mess

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THE ISSUE:

The president uses kids and Dreamers as bargaining chips for his vanity border wall.

THE STAKES:

Congress needs to tell him that taking human hostages is a red line.

President Donald Trump seems to think his half-hearted retreat from his abhorrent policy of separating immigrant children from their parents will make everyone forget he is still holding hundreds of thousands of human beings as political hostages.

No one should forget, including Congress.

Mr. Trump crossed a clear line of decency when he and Attorney General Jeff Sessions came up with their "zero tolerance" policy, under which anyone crossing the border illegally would be criminally charged. That included even people seeking asylum, a clear affront to human rights. It also meant separating children, even infants, from parents, detaining them in facilities that were little more than cages, and in many cases shipping them far away.

The president and his proxies, including Mr. Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, tried to deflect the widespread domestic and international outrage with excuses and outright lies, falsely asserting this was the result of some law passed by Democrats, not a policy devised by the Trump administration. Mr. Trump sought to use the human crisis he created to force Congress to fund his plan for a wall along the southern border — the one he once said Mexico would pay for.

But the images and cries of the children were too much for decent Americans to bear. With Democrats rightly refusing to let Mr. Trump use imprisoned kids as bargaining chips and even some of his normally compliant fellow Republicans bristling at the inhumanity, or at least the bad optics, he gave in. Or at least he made a show of doing so in an executive order that creates its own problems.

The order did not cover some 2,300 children separated under the zero tolerance policy. It's unclear if and when they will be reunited with their parents.

Then there's the Dreamers, more than 1 million people brought to the U.S. illegally as children who have since built honest, productive lives here. About 690,000 of them had been protected under President Barack Obama's DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program until Mr. Trump announced he was ending the program (though a court has put that on hold). And, as he tried to do with his zero tolerance policy, he sought to blame his action on Democrats. He's still trying to use the Dreamers as bargaining chips for his vanity wall.

And now the Trump administration is talking about holding an estimated 20,000 children on military bases, a plan that has sparked a fresh round of legal, logistical, and humanitarian confusion.

Mr. Trump didn't create America's immigration problem, but the chaos caused by his flailing, xenophobic approach and his inhumane methods are all his own doing. Congress should let him know it has not forgotten all the hostages he is still holding and threatens to harm if he doesn't get his way. It must send him a clear message: Find the children and reunite them with parents. Commit to an acceptable resolution of the DACA dilemma. Clean up your mess. Then we'll talk border security and everything else we should have in the first place.